SaskTel expects another busy holiday calling season

SaskTel expects another busy holiday calling season

December 22, 2015

750,000 long distance calls and 6 million texts expected on Christmas Day.

SaskTel projects that its customers will make approximately 750,000 long distance calls this Christmas Day, December 25. That estimate includes approximately 350,000 wireline long distance calls and approximately 400,000 wireless long distance calls. SaskTel also projects that customers will send approximately 6 million text messages on Christmas Day.

"Christmas is a special time for families to get in touch with their loved ones," said Jim Reiter, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. "SaskTel has been a part of connecting families and friends over the holidays for many years, and wishes all their customers a safe and happy holiday season."

The increase in long distance calling during the holidays may result in some temporary network congestion. This is a normal result of any sudden increase in activity on SaskTel's wireline and wireless networks.

Customers can minimize any inconvenience by remembering to:

place calls outside of the busy hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.;

verify phone numbers in advance;

take time zones into consideration.

Roughly 40% of Christmas Day calls are expected to be made to locations within Saskatchewan, while about 55% of the calls placed will be to Canadian destinations outside of the province. About 5% of the calls will go to the United States and other various international locations.

About SaskTel SaskTel is the leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) provider in Saskatchewan, with over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and over 1.4 million customer connections including over 618,000 wireless accesses, 437,000 wireline network accesses, 258,000 Internet accesses and over 103,000 maxTV™ subscribers. SaskTel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries offer a wide range of ICT products and services including competitive voice, data and Internet services, wireless data services,maxTV services, data centre services, cloud-based services, security monitoring services, advertising services, and international software and consulting services. SaskTel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries have a workforce of approximately 4,000 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Visit SaskTel at www.sasktel.com